Stillness in a world “distracted from distraction by distraction”: An introduction to and story from the Evergetinos

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Introduction

How do we obtain stillness (hésychia)?

Not merely for a moment; not simply in our days off; but even in our day-to-day labors? Especially as stillness describes how we are called to conduct all our work in this increasingly complex age of distraction (II Thes 3:12)?

Furthermore, how do we do so without, as Paul states, being “busybodies” (periergazomai), which specifies one who literally “works” (ergázomai) “around” (peri) a task without, in fact, accomplishing anything? In his words, we are exhorted not to “walk in a disorderly manner”, NKJV or “live an undisciplined life”, NET (ataktós, derived from ataktos). For in so doing, we will “not be working at all but being busybodies” (ηδὲν ἐργαζομένους, ἀλλὰ περιεργαζομένους).

Add to this command “by our Lord Jesus Christ” the reality, as T.S. Eliot points out in the Four Quartets, that the realities of modern life make us continually

Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after (Burnt Norton, III).

That was his assessment in the 1930s.

What would he write today with the advent of the telephone…cell phone…Iphone, internet, social media, etc. etc. etc.?

With this in mind, we introduce you to a text from a different era that may offer us a different path. Given the obscurity of this only recently translated collection, we begin with a brief introduction followed by the Story of the Three Industrious Brothers that may begin to elucidate some of these questions.

The Evergetinos: A brief background

Though The Evergetinos may not be known to many of us in the Modern West, this is a vitally important work for the Church, the content of which dates back to the earliest Christian communities, where these followers of Jesus were seeking, often in the deprivations of the desert, increasing levels of purity from the “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life” (I John 2:16) operative in This Fallen Age. There, as the writer to Hebrews declares, they “wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented— of whom the world was not worthy” (Heb 11:37-38).

And in their stories we find what can only be described as the great treasure of Christian literature. The Evergetinos takes its name from the monk Paul Evergetinos, the founder of an 11th century monastery in Constantinople dedicated to the Theotokos “the Benefactress” ​(ἡ μονὴ τῆς Εὐεργέτιδος). He brings together a vast history compiled from the first millenium of the Church, where “the great ascetics of the Egyptian desert” are featured on nearly every page together with

excerpts from the Apophthegmata of the Fathers, the Lausaic History of Palladius, the writings of St Cassian and the Lives of St Euthymius the Great, St Pachomius the Great and Amma Syncletica, which are complemented by extracts from the Dialogues of St Gregory the Great (the “Latin Gerontikon”). The writings of Saints Isaac and Ephraim of Syria, St Mark the Ascetic, St Basil the Great, St Diadochus of Photike, St Maximus the Confessor, St Isaiah of Scetis, St Zosima of Palestine and Saints Barsanuphius and John are combined with excerpts from the lives of many popular Saints and Martyrs in a remarkable synthesis which enriches each hypothesis with a multitude of proven, living examples of Orthodox Christian spirituality.1

To go futher,

These extracts from the Fathers and Mothers of the Church are taken from the years towards the end of the Roman persecution, the time of the Arian and Nestorian heresies and the time of the Iconoclast heresy. The context here matters, because it shows us that living a spiritual life is possible no matter what the context is.

Even in times of hardship and tribulation, when the Christian faith was under attack from both the inside and the outside, these people cultivated their virtues and gave us these lessons for our spiritual benefit many years later.

The effect is that we are not merely confronted with a pathway that calls our modern Christian life of comfort into question, but much more importantly, which reveals how the spiritual transformation of the Kingdom inherent in true metänoiä is worked out in the practical rigors of a life lived here and now through and in Christ.

The question for us ‘modern readers’, then, is whether it is worth the demands of undertaking such an ancient text? Especially as its words, by virtue of their foreignness to us both in time and place in addition to their spiritual emphases drawn from the experiential realities of sacrificial love and self-denial, will, no doubt, cut against the grain of our modern mind.

In response, we should be reminded of Lewis’ words from God in the Dock (which we quote in full below), remembering that Lewis himself may be viewed as one of the founders of modern literary criticism with his English Literature in the Sixteenth century, having read essentially every book in that era…after entering Oxford following WWI, where he “achieved an outstanding record, taking a double first in Honours Moderations (Greek and Latin texts) and Greats (classical history and philosophy) and then staying on for an additional first in English language and literature completing it in one year instead of the usual three…”2:

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books…. This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or Mr. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself.

Now this seems to me topsy-turvy.

Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light.

Often it cannot be fully understood with out the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why—the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed “at” some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance.

This leads him to recommend the following (which is quoted often without the above preface):

The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity (“mere Christianity” as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books.

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.1

(That being the case, you may now begin to understand one of the burdens of this site…!)

To return to the text, the collection was initially assembled in the 11th century by hieromonk Paul Evergetinos, the founder of the Theotokos Euergetinos Monastery erected outside of the walls of Constantinople. Seven centuries later it was formalized by St. Makarios of Corinth and St. Nicodemos who brought together a “number of manuscripts scattered amount the libraries on Mount Athos”, being published first in Greek in 1783 as a companion volume to The Philokalia. After two further centuries and with twenty years of collaboration led by Archbishop Chrysostomos, The Evergetinos was finally translated into English and published in its totality by The Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies.

The work, so that we are aware, is organized into 200 sections termed “Hypotheses” on a given spiritual theme with each section further divided into categories based upon the source text. For a podcast which walks through all four volumes of the recently published English edition, see here.

One final note

We should remember that much of what is written in this collection is by and for those who had received the rare calling to be an anchorite monk, that is, those who lived a hidden life of solitude and prayer with the warfare that accompanies it outside of the confines of human society. This calling, however, according to the Fathers of the Church, was not only rare, but also exceedingly dangerous as it could drive men into a state of spiritual delusion, known as prelest, which had the potential to totally destroy a man. As such, their writings go so far as to strongly advice, even command, against such a path. Even then, if one was truly called, he had to learn to “live rightly with men” before we was
”able to live rightly in solitude.”

Three words from the Desert may be helpful in providing a framework:

Abba Longinus

One day Abba Longinus questioned Abba Lucius about three thoughts saying first, ‘I want to go into exile.’  The old man said to him, ‘If you cannot control your tongue, you will not be an exile anywhere.  Therefore control your tongue here, and you will be an exile.’  

Next he said to him, ‘I wish to fast.’  The old man replied, ‘Isaiah said, “If you bend your neck like a rope or a bulrush that is not the fast I will accept; but rather, control your evil thoughts”’ (Isaiah 58).  

He said to him the third time, ‘I wish to flee from men.’  The old man replied, ‘If you have not first of all lived rightly with men, you will not be able to live rightly in solitude.’

Amma Syncletica

Amma Syncletica said, ‘There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time.  It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his thoughts.’

Abba Poemen

A man may seem to be silent, but if his heart is condemning others he is babbling ceaselessly.  But there may be another who talks from morning till night and yet he is truly silent; that is, he says nothing that is not profitable.  

As most of us, if not all of us, however, have not received such a calling, we must be nonetheless willing to drink from the deep well of our spiritual forebearers, so as to learn lessons that we simply could not learn amidst the demands of our taxing, modern life. As students who have been instructed by variety of professors over our years of study, we can receive extraordinary benefit. if we are but willing, from experts in fields that we will never pursue.

Hypothesis XIII

With that final introductory word, we offer selections from The Evergetinos found in Vol. 2 under Hypothesis XIII, which has the title,

How one renouncing the world should go to a remote place;

What constitutes a remote place and what benefit derives from it; and

What places are most appropriate for living out the ascetic life

As for how the text begins to develop the meaning of a “remote place”, two sayings from the opening section derived from the Gerontikon should give us an idea:

Abba Longinos once asked Father Loukios:

“Abba, my soul yearns to dwell in a remote place.”

“If you do not succeed in controlling your tongue,” the Elder replied, “you are not in a remote place, no matter where you move.

But if you control your tongue, then you will be far removed even here.”

And

An ascetic Elder said,:

“If a monk knows that there is a place where he can thrive spiritually, but does not go there because he might thus be deprived of the necessities of life, then this monk does not believe that God exists.”

To this we add one further saying from Abba Isaiah (5th c.):

Brother, if you turn away from the material world and its comfort, beware the demon of sadness, lest, on account of great poverty or grief, you fail to succeed in reaching to the standard of the great virtues, which are:

Not to count yourself great; to withstand scoffing and insults; and to have your name mentioned no where in the world.

Again,

Not to count yourself great;

To withstand scoffing and insults;

And to have your name mentioned no where in the world.

Would such words be offered as modern advice to church planters and “influencers”, clinic founders and CEO’s, pioneering clinicians and missionary doctors?

Given the probable answer in the negative, we add a few more quotations from Isaiah for good measure before coming to the Story of the Three Industrious Brothers:

The crown of all good works consists in this:

That a man place all his hope in God; that he finds recourse in Him once and for all with his heart and strength; that he be filled with compassion for all and weep before God, imploring His help and mercy.

The sign that a sin is forgiven is that the sin does not generate any activity in your heart and that you have forgotten it to such a degree that in conversation about a similar sin you do not feel any inclination toward that sin but rather consider it something totally foreign to you. That is the sign that you are completely pardoned.

Watch with all your strength that you do not speak one thing with your mouth and have something else in your heart.

The crown of good works is love; the crown of passions is the justification of one's sins.

With these sayings as the preamble, we come now to the main story that will open up for us a path, if we are but willing, through the initial delusions and later quagmires and stresses of work into the habitation of stillness.

The Story of Three Industrious Brothers Who Chose Three Different Spiritual Paths

Someone related the following story. There were three industrious brothers who were close to one another. But they chose different ways in their spiritual lives.

The one was given to reconciling those who were fighting and battling with one another, in keeping with what is said in the Gospel: "Blessed are the peacemakers."

The second decided to visit and serve the sick, and the third brother departed for the desert to live in silence and asceticism among the Fathers.

Their Three Outcomes

The first brother, now, after being greatly belabored by people's squabbles and quarrels, and being unable to appease them all, went in despair to the brother who was caring for the sick. He found, however, that he too was sad in not being able to achieve perfection in his commission. The two having thus agreed, they left to see the ascetic brother, wishing to learn what had happened to him in his ascetic life of silence.

On seeing him, they related to him first all that had befallen them, that is, how each had encountered numberless trials and had been unable to succeed in the work which he had voluntarily embraced. They then asked the ascetic to tell them what he had gained from the life of silence.

The ascetic put some water in a container and said to them:

"Look at this water."

The water in the container was still agitated. After a few moments time, he said to them:

"Now look at the water."

By now the water had become completely calm.

As they were watching, they saw their faces in the water, as if though they were looking in a mirror. Then, characteristically, the ascetic told them:

"My brothers, such also is he who finds himself among men; from the agitation, he does not see his sins.

However, when he removes himself far from the world and establishes himself in an isolated spot, and his senses are quieted, then he sees his shortcomings and corrects himself, if he so wishes. with the help of the Grace of God.

The agitation ceases. The near continual distractions calm into stillness. Then seeing we, in the language of Isaiah, begin to finally perceive.

Amen! May it be so!